Argento Week
Suspiria
SUSSSSSSSSPIRIA! On a great big screen!
Last night, after a week of Argento film’s, I got to see his spellbinding masterpiece Suspiria on a cinema-screen in the National Media Museum as part of the Bradford International Film Festival. I’d obviously wound myself into a bit of a frenzied excitement about it through the week and it certainly did not disappoint.
Every time I hear someone say they choose to watch films at home rather than at the cinema, mostly due to all the other film-goers, I think to myself “You’ve just been going to the wrong films with the wrong people!”. Last night’s audience had almost all seen the film before and sat in captivated silence, tittering nervously at the occasional gentle comic moments and - even before fun - audibly anticipating oncoming moments of horror. If a bad crowd can ruin a film, a great crowd can make one. Not that Suspiria needed any help in that respect…
Argento Week's FINALE!
Of course, all that Dario Argento film watching wasn’t just for fun, it was all to build up to the fantastically exciting screening of Suspiria tonight in the Bradford International Film Festival. It’s hardly going to be worth me reviewing it - I love the film so much already a review will probably be just a string of superlatives and smiley faces - but I’m hoping that, given the big screen treatment, I’ll find even more to love about it!
Cat O' Nine Tails
So here we are! Last night’s film, which was number 7 and brought my week of Argento films (before Suspiria tonight) to a close, was Cat O’ Nine Tails, another one that I hadn’t seen before. I was, I must say, pleasantly surprised. It falls, again, into the giallo camp more than the horror side - although they all show elements of both - and, being another very early film I must admit I didn’t expect as much fun as I got.
Profondo Rosso [aka Deep Red]
Well, after the (comparatively) low point of Four Flies…, the week got right back on track with the superb Argento masterpiece that is Profondo Rosso. This is a film very much in the Bird with the Crystal Plumage vein; it’s giallo murder mystery through and through. On top of that, it’s done extremely well.
Here, more than anywhere, I’ll have to tread very carefully in not giving away spoilers. Deep Red, you see, has a more carefully constructed plot than most Argento films and, as well as not knowing to the very end who’s responsible, we actually care! It’s a film that is more perfectly balanced than his other movies. Phenomena, for all that it was a great watch, has a very long period of almost-nothing-happening through the middle (although the awesomeness of the end makes this easy to forgive!), but Profondo Rosso is a much more polished piece. Information is given away little by little, red herrings and genuine clues are tumbled together into a mix that is never less than enthralling (Enthralling seems a little too fancy a word, but I’m aware that I’ve called nearly every Argento film this week ‘compelling’…). And never fear, the end certainly lives up to the standard set by the rest of the film!
Four Flies on Grey Velvet
[AKA 4 mosche di velluto grigio]
This is certainly going to be the slimmest write-up of any of this week’s Argento films. I’d seen Four Flies… before but I could remember almost nothing about it, something which is very rarely a good sign!
To be fair to Argento, before I’m critical, this was only his third film as director. Following in much the same vein as Bird with the Crystal Plumage, this is a film that is far more closely linked with more traditional crime and mystery films than with the tense horror he went on to make. Four Flies… shows many early versions of what would become Argento tropes; it treads a line somewhere between murder mystery and actual horror but is always slightly unsure of where it really lies.
Phenomena
Another new (to me) Argento film, another next-day post. The problem this time, though, is that I still don’t know what to think. Phenomena has me confused; it could either be my least favourite Argento film yet or it could even be - whisper it- my favourite. I certainly will need to see it again beofre I’m sure.
It has all the faults you could accuse an Argento film of, and it has them by the bucketfull. The story is pretty much nonsensical. The dialogue is clumsy. The acting is as wooden as it gets. If I wanted (and several IMDB reviewers have wanted to) I could make this sound like a truly awful film. It’s about a half-mad girl who communicates with insects, for heaven’s sake!
Tenebrae (pt II)
It it, I’d say, quite fitting that Tenebrae, as the first Argento film of the week that I hadn’t previously seen, is the first that I write about with a little more space to reflect on it. And yet… still, I just don’t quite know what to make of it. Was it absolutely stunning? Was it run-of-the-mill? Was it powerful and tense? Or was it just a bit silly?
Tenebrae (AKA Tenebre)
Tonight’s film was Tenebrae, the first one that was new to me. Sadly, I’m way too tired to write about it now, so it can wait until the morning.
For now, fans of Justice’s ‘Phantom Parts I & II’ should probably check out the Tenebrae theme tune, contributed by repeated-Argento-collaborators, Goblin.
Justice:
Goblin:
Bird with the Crystal Plumage
From one to the next!
Tonight’s film was Bird with the Crystal Plumage (L’uccello dalle Piume de Cristallo) which was another that I’d seen before but, once again, was none the worse for it.
My entry for this one will be much shorter. Mostly because I’m much more tired today, but partly also because the film is, in my eyes at least, somewhat less remarkable. It makes a fairly neat comparison against Opera though, mostly because nearly every flaw I found in Opera is corrected here.
Opera
So, part one of Chopping Mall’s Dario Argento Week is his 1987 masterpiece Opera.
This is pitched, as a few of his films are, somewhere between straight up giallo whodunit and a tense psychological horror. With gruesome death scenes. So, you could say, it manages to do a bit of everything that’s awesome about Italian cinema. Except Westerns. There are certainly no cowboys…
The basic premise sees Betty called in at the last minute to perform in the opera of MacBeth. The famous curse of the Scottish play has struck down the intended Lady MacBeth, leaving the role wide open for the young and inexperienced Betty. She steps up to the mark - and gets rave reviews - but from this moment on things really start to go wrong: lights crash to the floor on the opening night, staff members are found dead and then Betty encounters a mysterious masked man…